True North Knew an
Arena Needed to be ‘Cozy’
Prior to and during construction of Winnipeg’s new arena,
there was plenty of second-guessing and hand-wringing related to the size of
the building and, more specifically, the seating capacity. The general public,
media and people in the hockey business expressed concern over why ownership of
the Manitoba Moose and their partners were constructing a building that could
accommodate only just over 15,000 fans for hockey.
Criticism continued in the ensuing years, knowing ownership’s
ultimate focus and the fan base’s main interest was in bringing the NHL back to
the city. Phil Esposito, while visiting the MTS Centre, commented how beautiful
the building was, but that he didn’t know why they hadn’t added another 2 or
3,000 seats while they were at it.
As it turns out, ownership (True North Sports &
Entertainment Ltd) knew exactly what they were doing when deciding on the location,
design and capacity of the arena. The organization came up with a design that
worked well in a relatively confined area within the downtown, the part of the
city where they always wanted to build an arena. They went with a building that
a city the size of Winnipeg could be counted on to fill consistently, hopefully
even 100% of the time.
What True North hoped to do was generate the maximum
amount of revenue from a structure that was appropriate for Winnipeg. They did
not try to replicate what worked in New York, Montreal, Toronto or even Calgary
and Edmonton. Those are all bigger centres, with much larger populations and
corporate bases.
True North more closely followed models adopted by Major
League Baseball teams in the past 20 years when it came to building new
stadiums. Gone were the cavernous 70 or 80,000 seat parks (sometimes because
they weren’t dedicated just to baseball) that were more common in the first
half of the twentieth century. Major League teams manufactured parks they
didn’t have to share with NFL teams and were designed with their fans’ needs in
mind (see NY Mets’ Citi Field http://espn.go.com/travel/stadium/_/s/mlb/id/21/citi-field and Miami’s Marlins Park http://espn.go.com/travel/stadium/_/s/mlb/id/28/sun-life-stadium). More importantly, they realized
that it was better to have demand outstrip supply rather than vice-versa. Teams
can always exercise more control over pricing when tickets are more difficult
to come by.
This is even more essential in the NHL, where teams
realistically hope to be at or near capacity every game of the season, unlike
MLB, that has an 81 game home season and during which a wider range for
attendance game to game is always the case. The Jets sold out for the entire
season, finishing in the top 10 in the league in terms of attendance in
relation to capacity (http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance).
Although ticket prices were reasonable they were expensive
enough, especially single game prices, to generate the kind of revenue the team
needs to be operable. Along with an avalanche of merchandise the team has sold
this year the club has generated more than enough revenue dollars to remain
viable. The Jets will not qualify for the league’s revenue sharing program
since they were in the top 15 revenue-generating franchises in the NHL, despite
having the smallest seating capacity in the league by over 1,200 (the next
smallest is the old Nassau Coliseum the New York Islanders play in).
The MTS Centre has also been a huge moneymaker beyond
hockey, attracting a large number of concerts, exhibitions and other events to
consistently rank in the top 20 attended venues worldwide since its’ opening in 2004. The home for the new Winnipeg
Jets has been part of a very intelligent, thorough and well-thought-out plan to
get an NHL team in Winnipeg and make sure that it stays there this time.
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